Water Under the Bridge
by Cosmic Daeva
Summary: For Xela getting emancipated means no more perverted foster brothers, no more waiting an hour to use the bathroom, no more sleeping on a run down old couch in her crowded foster sisters room...to bad she needs the help of Sherlock Holmes to find her birth mother to make her dream a reality.
1. Chapter 1

Prologue:

After an hour of waiting Xela finally got to use the bathroom, she had showed and was currently blow drying her hair, when Stevie her perverted foster brother broke into the bathroom and pulled her towel down.

Xela yanked it back and kicked him in the stomach, "Get out of here, Perv!" she yelled slamming the door.

She couldn't wait till she found her birth mom.


	2. Chapter 2

I OWN NOTHING! EXCEPT XELA! SHERLOCK CHARACTERS BELONG TO STEPHEN MOFFAT AND MARK GATISS!

Xela looked at the address on her hand, 221B Baker St. the person living here would help her find her birth mother.

She rang the bell.

Sherlock looked up, his eyes glazed over as he left his mind palace from where the door bell rudely brought back to reality."John," he growled, "the door."

"Yeah, I heard it Sherlock, it wouldn't hurt you if you got it would you?" John walked over the the door and down the stairs to let the client in.

Sherlock reentered his mind palace.

Mere seconds had passed since Sherlock entered his mind palace that John brought the client into the flat.

"You Holmes?" she said.

Sherlock opened one eye lazily quickly taking the girl in. He quickly noticed that her hair was kept to the bare minimum of requirements to beauty but freshly washed so the jet blackness shone in the light. Her army surplus jacket was from Good Will or a thrift shop somewhere as it was three sizes too big and made for men. Her shirt was a bland mix of cotton from three years ago. Her jeans like her jacket were made for men, three sizes too big. They bunched up around her ankles and she looped a belt around it so they wouldn't fall off of her hips. From what he could see she wasn't starved or starving herself, she was thin but with a layer of fat, but she was five four so that could be due to her relative height/weight ratio. She looked around 124 pounds. Obviously American from the way she carried herself with undeserved elitism and accent. Her eyes were grey with specks of blue that wove in and out of her irises. Quickly he summarized that she was looking for someone.

"Yes," He said.

"You as good as they say?" She asked.

"Obviously," His deep voice usually penetrated those weak willed clients. She hardly blinked.

"Prove it." She challenged.

"American," his tongue stayed where he flicked it on the 'n', he raised an eyebrow.

"I have an accent."

"You have enough money to afford new clothes, yet you don't buy them. You're wearing men's clothes. So you bought them cheap or you stole them. Most likely they were a gift probably from a charity event, for the poor or hungry (to be sure I'd have to look at your shoes). You're bright not abnormally so, but enough to outsmart a lot of people. You bought a plane ticket here, so you have a bit of spending money, not a lot though, passports cost a bit I'm told, so you either ran away from a rich home or fake I.D." he paused to breathe. "You don't sleep well, posture gave that way. Street fighter- your knuckles gave that away. Little scars on them best be careful the way you through a punch could kill someone at the right angle. Who are looking for? Your boyfriend?"

She licked her lips and smirked.

"Was I right?" he demanded.

"Foster care." She said.

"So I was right."

"For the most part, I guess." She said.

"What'd I miss?" he asked.

"Not boyfriend. Mother." She said.

"Why would you be looking for your mother?"

She sat down across from him.

"I want to be emancipated, but they have a stupid rule that you need parental permission to divorce your parents."

"So live with it it can't be that bad."

"You've never been in The System obviously."

"What's so torturous about foster care that you want out so badly?" he asked.

"What isn't _torturous_ about foster care? Yeah you get the good parents who actually foster because they're generally good people but that's not the usual case for me. You never heard of Chop-Shop Seamus, you never had foster parents that punish you by putting Tabasco sauce under your tongue when you didn't finish your vegetables! Some parents are in it for the money. In The System you either get smart fast or hope some fool takes pity on you. I want out! I don't want other people to make decisions for me. So are you willing to help me or do I need to go somewhere else?"

"What's your name?" Sherlock asked, looking at her with both eyes.

"Xela Brown." She pronounced it as Zee-la.

"What's her name? Your mother." John asked.

"Maggie, that's all I know, the original birth certificate caught fire and burned."

"We'll take the case." Sherlock said.

"Thanks let me know when you find her." Xela said.


	3. Chapter 3

_I own nothing but Xela, Mark Gatiss and Stephen Moffat own Sherlock. I know very little about the foster care system, so Xela's situation is completely made up, there is no relation to anyone living or dead. Ignore the first chapter, it's for me, I'm just using it to maintain my original story._

Sherlock looked at Xela.

"Why'd you come here in person?" John asked.

"The internet says he's the best." Xela said.

"And your biological father what about him?" John asked, "Surely you'd need his signature as well."

"She left his name out of the birth certificate," Xela clicked her tongue.

"She didn't know his name obviously." Sherlock said.

Sherlock closed his eyes, "Tell me what you want me to find."

"Find Maggie, that's it. I'll take care of everything else."

XXX

It had been a few hours since Xela left 221B, and Sherlock hadn't moved or opened his eyes. John was out on a date, so nothing bothered Sherlock from thinking. Maggie was dead he had deduced that quickly enough, the same fire that burned the original birth certificate. Maggie a pseudonym for whatever her birth-mother's real name was, but that's not what bothered him.

XXX

At ten o'clock the next morning Xela came back to Baker Street. She burst through the door with undiscouraged power.

"Have you found Maggie yet?" She asked wasting no time.

Sherlock looked up, Xela was in the same jeans and army surplus jacket that she had been in yesterday, but her shirt was different. She looked like she had slept well, but not that she had paid money to stay in a hotel.

Sherlock tapped his fingers against his lips, he barely took notice to the fact that Xela was there and had said anything.

Xela sat down in the chair that John usually sat in, but John wasn't there, he was in the kitchen making tea.

"Xela, where did you sleep last night?" John asked when he walked into the room.

"Woman's shelter."

"Why a woman's shelter," John asked, "What not a youth shelter?"

"More open beds."

"Creative." Sherlock said.

"Back to the point did you found Maggie yet?"

"Your biological father, what do you know about him?" Sherlock asked.

"That he's had unprotected sex." She said, "What's this got to do with anything?"

"Maggie or whatever her real name is is dead. She died in the fire that got your original birth certificate." Sherlock said.

"So what you're saying is that I'm stuck in the System until I age out." Xela said.

"Your biological father is alive though; would you like me to find him?"

"What would he have to do to get me out of the system? What does he have anything to do with me? That man can rot in hell, for all I care."

"Would you like me to find him?" Sherlock said.

"Yes," Xela said.


	4. Chapter 4

_I own nothing but Xela, Mark Gatiss and Stephen Moffat own Sherlock. I know very little about the foster care system, so Xela's situation is completely made up, there is no relation to anyone living or dead. Ignore the first chapter, it's for me, I'm just using it to maintain my original story. This is mainly back-story on Xela and her birth father, Xela doesn't know who it is, but Sherlock does!_

XX

Xela left after she agreed to let Sherlock find her biological father, the only reason she agreed to let Sherlock find him, was because she wouldn't go back to the house. The parents were only in it for the money; they didn't start out that way though.

Jack and Shelia Johnson had started out as good foster parents; they had a child of their own, but their daughter Leila ran away from her home when she was thirteen. As a result Jack and Shelia found out their only daughter had died, in a mugging gone wrong. They never found her killer. So to fill the hole that Leila had left in their hearts, Jack and Shelia began to foster children. In the first decade of helping children without a home (fourteen children in all), they had seen those fourteen wayward youths through school, first jobs, and even a marriage. But Jack and Shelia Johnson grew bitter.

Those children didn't really have biological parents that loved them, Leila did! Why did she leave? She had a nice life. It tore them apart that Leila had left, so they began to take out their frustration on the foster children. They took in more children; using old couches from storage as beds, and became super authoritarian parents.

When a child did something wrong, like a fail a test, not finish his or her vegetables, not saying _excuse me_ after sneezing, or anything they deemed wrong, Jack and Shelia would take a teaspoon of Tabasco sauce and force whatever kid ,who did something wrong, to swallow the Tabasco sauce. Now the Johnsons just collected money.

When Xela first got there, there were four other foster kids, Mable (11), Kit (14), Stevie (12), and Malcolm (9). There were three bed rooms in that house, one that held the boys and one that held the girls. Mable and Kit had been there before Xela and had taken the bunk-beds that were there, Xela slept on the pull out couch.

Malcolm was at the age where he did nothing but want to please everybody, he was rarely in trouble. But Stevie was at the age where he discovered the other gender, he was constantly rifling through Kit and Xela's underwear drawers, breaking into the bathroom when they were in the shower, pulling down their towels, when they got out of the shower. Basically he was punished the most.

Xela was the second most punished, she was getting into trouble. Before she lived with the Johnsons, she lived in a Girls Home in Montana. She was a survivor, her best friend, Lizzy, in the Girls Home had left when she meet a pimp called Jonathan. Lizzy left with him, but not before asking Xela to come with her, once she realized she fell through the cracks of the Social System. Four months later Xela had found out that Lizzy left Jonathan after three weeks of relative freedom, and in Lizzy's hubris she ended up getting caught, killed, and gutted. Cops found her empty shell. Her organs and blood were sold on the black market. Chop-Shop Seamus, was a story that all kids in the system knew, it was about a guy looking for stolen parts, to sell to rich people on waiting lists. He would take parts from people who wouldn't be missed. Then Xela was placed into the Johnsons care.

In grief Xela acted out; she had never really cared for people, her apathy was the way she made sure nobody got under her skin, at first then her apathy became part of her personality. She wasn't lethargic she just didn't care about others. Lizzy was the exception it wasn't like she _loved_ Lizzy but she felt that someone needed to acknowledge Lizzy's death; so in the only way she knew how Xela started fighting. Somebody bugged her at school, she threw punches. Anytime someone bothered her she threw punches. She began to fight in underground clubs for money; even if she didn't win she still got a cut of the profits, as she was a fan favorite and tight with the guy who ran it. Not at the Johnsons or at her foster siblings, she knew better than that, it didn't stop her from wanting to deck Stevie but she was sure that if she left the Johnsons without being emancipated first then she would be next on Chop-Shop Seamus' list of parts.

So Xela formulated a plan, she would hire someone who would help her find her birth mother then she would, by any means possible, get her birth mother to sign the paper work she kept in her jacket pocket.

She took to the internet and found Sherlock Holmes, using the $4,000 she had in a private account used some of the money for a plane ticket to London and paid a guy she knew from the underground fight ring to make her a realistic passport. Now all she needed was to find her mom.

XX  
With the realization that her bio mom was dead but her bio dad was alive she began to make plans for her future, plans that had nearly been destroyed when Holmes told her that her biological mother was dead. She wondered who her biological father was; she wanted to think that he was a drunken loser. But she knew better than that, she knew that some knowledge was genetic, like the ability to solve equations in your head, she could do that. She figured that either her mother or her father could, and she highly doubted that if her biological father was the smart one he would have had sex with a woman who had a below average intelligence and vise versa whether or not drugs or alcohol were involved. At least she hoped that was the case. She was lying in her bed in the woman's shelter thinking about what would have happened if she left with Lizzy, would Lizzy have lived or would they both be dead.

.XX

Mycroft looked at his security feed of Sherlock, "Mycroft, we need to talk."

_Dear dear_ he thought_ what did little Sherlock want now didn't he know that he was busy running the entire United Kingdom and helping world leaders across the globe_.

"Send a car to pick up my brother." He told his assistant.

XX

An hour later Sherlock and Mycroft sat in a conference room not talking.

Stoically Mycroft said, "Sherlock, what is this about. I am busy you know."

"We need to talk about Meredith Brown."

"What about her?"

"She's dead." Sherlock said bored with that knowledge.

"I know that, Sherlock. Her death isn't exactly a surprise to me." Mycroft said.

"What about her pregnancy?" Sherlock cocked an eyebrow.

"She was never pregnant, I would have known if she was."


End file.
